Guidelines, examples, and topics to consider for green graphic designers.
Have you ever felt confused on what you should be prioritizing as a small business owner when it comes to design?
You know you need a logo, a website, a presence on social media, and a strategy. But do you need a full brand? Do you need to be paying for SEO? Do you need to be on every social media platform? How do you even begin to tackle these things?
MOO is a popular choice for printing business cards. Heck, I printed my cards on their recycled cotton stock. But, how green are MOO business cards, actually? I did a deep dive into their paper stocks to find out! This included scouring MOO’s website, emailing MOO customer service, and researching the Mohawk papers MOO uses.
MOO offers four different paper stocks for business cards: original, cotton, super, and luxe. Original is their least expensive option, cotton and super are in the middle, and luxe is their most expensive. Additionally, they offer a few other finish options. Design options for their super stock include gold foil, silver foil, spot gloss, and raised spot gloss. These options are inherently detrimental to the environment, but, more on that later. Aside from their super stock, MOO offers the option to add letterpress (a great green graphic design wow-factor) on their luxe cards.
At Blue Raspberry Design, we believe that graphic designers and web designers have accountabililty to our planet. For print, we do not believe that minimizing the carbon footprint of projects falls solely on the printers we partner with. The same goes for web hosting. It is our job to ensure a project is green from start to finish. To do this, these are the green graphic design and green web design standards we employ.
